An extraordinary discovery in 21st century science has been made if confirmed: evidence of something that occurred before the Big Bang. Our cosmos was “bruised” in collisions with other universes. Astronomers, led by Sir Roger Penrose, mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background data acquired by the Planck Space Observatory designed to observe the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using high sensitivity and angular resolution.

Last month the duo announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang, which what you’d find if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, according to MIT’s Technology Review, “the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.”

Now, another group says they’ve found something else in the echo of the Big Bang: an inflationary model in which the the universe we see is merely a bubble among infinite bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.
These bubbles, reports Technology Review, “probably had a violent past, jostling together and leaving ‘cosmic bruises’ where they touched. If so, these bruises ought to be visible today in the cosmic microwave background.”Stephen Feeney at University College London and colleagues say they’ve found tentative evidence of four bruises in the form of circular patters, implying that our universe must have smashed into other bubbles at least four times in the past.

Skeptics believe that the “circles” in the WMAP could be a trick of the eye. Feeney in fact acknowledges that “it is rather easy to fifind all sorts of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB.”In the past few weeks, several groups have confirmed Pernose’s finding while others have found no evidence for it.  One of the great science debate appears to be unfolding with only way to confirm the new theories  will be to confirm or refute the findings with new data forthcoming soon thanks to the Planck spacecraft that is currently scanning into the cosmic microwave background with more unparalled resolution.

When cosmologist get to analyze the new data, these circles “should either spring into clear view or disappear into noise (rather like the mysterious Mars face that appeared in pictures of the red planet taken by Viking 1 and then disappeared in the higher resolution shots from the Mars Global Surveyor)” according to Technology Review.

Sources:

Casey Kazan

http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1995: First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation

http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706: Concentric Circles In WMAP Data May Provide Evidence Of Violent Pre-Big-Bang Activity

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26132/?ref=rss

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